UNDERSTOOD

Park Crescent is a dead end off 86th Road near 164th Street in Jamaica Hills, a neighborhood rife with odd roads and dead ends, many of them connected with the formal Normal School and the old trolley line that used to rumble through. Park Crescent is straight as a string and not a crescent at all, and it’s also got this ancient NO PARKING sign nailed to a tree.

It’s of considerable age, proven by the rust and also by the old Department of Traffic notation. Decades ago, “Traffic” was changed to “Transportation.”

The other thing about those old parking signs is that they were normally mounted perpendicular to the curb and did not have the arrows pointing forward and/or back that the modern signs, mounted at an angle, have. When the rules differed in front and behind the signs, there would be a line added that had the text THIS SIDE OF SIGN to indicate that. I’m surprised to see one nailed to a tree though. I wonder if the Department of Traffic really did that, or if some homeowner did that with an old No Parking sign he found.